All my own true self

This isn’t pleasant, but it’s real. And it’s the crux of my thesis about the potential for the transformation of human consciousness that is happening on the planet right now. The bombed-out building, the woman, and the developers in this collage are from a February 1983 National Geographic article about the rebuilding of Beirut following the 1982 Lebanon War, but they could have just as easily been taken in Syria today. Have you been following the escalation of the humanitarian crisis in Syria? I read an article in the NYT a few weeks about Syrian children freezing to death in refugee camps near the Turkish border, and I can’t get it out of my mind. Nor do I want to. A father who lost his 8-month-old daughter is quoted, “I dream about being warm. I just want my children to feel warm. I don’t want to lose them to the cold. I don’t want anything except a house with windows that keeps out the cold and the wind.” I don’t know about you, but when I read that statement all of a sudden my privilege reeks.

Lately I have been writing about how the fall of patriarchal structures (the Saturn Pluto conjunction) brings with it the potential for an evolutionary leap in human consciousness. Here’s the part I haven’t mentioned: the evolution in consciousness that I have been talking about requires engaging with the suffering of our time. Ultimately what we are talking about here is the realization of Oneness on a mass scale. We are talking about the lived experience that I am that father in Syria who just wants shelter for his children and I am the baby who froze to death in the cold. I am also the petty tyrant dropping bombs, and I am the humanitarian trying to help. There are seven billion people on this planet and they are all my own true self.

With the realization that we are one, avoidable suffering becomes intolerable. This is not a time to look away from the pain of the world. We must let our hearts be broken open. The grief is an initiation, and love is on the other side waiting to be born into this world on a level that we can’t even imagine. This is what we came for.